This week’s popular diversion for those who consider themselves crusty old cycling fans is to loudly pooh-pooh the broader cycling community’s feelings of shock or outrage at the whole Vinokourov-Kolobnev race-fixing allegation. I get that. I have those tendencies, too.

To seasoned ears, newer followers of the sport – those who haven’t read all the same books, heard all the same stories, or talked to all the same people by all the same roadsides over the years – can sound like howling, reactionary banshees when confronted with cycling news that feels like a gentle, nostalgic trip down memory lane to folks who have been around awhile. Then all of that howling and self-righteous moral indignation gets amplified by Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and message boards until it’s finally so loud that we can’t just turn down our hearing aids anymore, and we have to go out there and give those whippersnappers a crack across the bridge of the nose with our canes. It’s good to get out – makes us feel young again.

So what a relief when, just when knocking the kids about with the long and romantic history of doping was starting to wear thin, the Eastern Bloc suicide brigade handed us fresher fodder. Thanks to Vino and Kolobnev, we get to club them young’uns with how Freddy Maertens and Tom Simpson bought and sold races. How it’s all there in Joe Parkin’s book. How sometimes, even the immortals had to reach into their pockets. How can they be surprised? How can they be outraged? Study up, boys, it’s all part of the sport’s rich tradition.

The whole thing is a crotchety bastard’s dream.

But while I believe that modern cycling fandom’s knee-jerk moral outrage and occasionally loose grasp of history should be stamped down even more often and more vehemently than it is, I also think the old guard should avoid dismissing Kolobnev’s alleged sale of the 2010 Liege-Bastogne-Liege to Vinokourov just for the sake of pounding our chests and reciting some stale history. Two simple reasons:

First. This isn’t some ditchwater kermesse in West Flanders we’re talking about here, or even a Tour de France stage win which, despite their prestige, are relatively plentiful things. No, Liege is one of the five monuments of the sport, La Doyenne, the oldest classic, one of the hardest and most beautiful. And though the best Liege will never unseat even the dullest, most mundane Paris-Roubaix in various website and magazine year-end readers’ polls, it’s one of the highest value targets in the sport. Winning it can’t make you a legend on its own – every race has flukes on its roll of honor – but if you’re a legend in the making, it can certainly help you well along. It's valuable, and its damn near as close to sacred as the sport has.

Ah, yes, grandpa, I can hear your spleen rumbling now. “Big races have been bought and sold in the past.” True. Which is why I’m equipped with a second reason.

Second. It’s just not 1972 anymore. Or 1982. Or 1992. Or 2002.

Information travels more quickly and easily now than ever before. Obviously, when it gets out that a rider buys a race in 2010, word travels far and fast, and the hard reality of email chains and electronic bank transfers have replaced the usefully ethereal properties of verbal agreements and cash. In an era of information access and traceability, bought races can’t be as easily dismissed as rumor as they were in the past, the rumors have more power, and what would have been a saucy little paragraph in a post-career bio even ten years ago is now far less likely to make it to the point of being a quaint book tour “revelation.” Transgressions discovered today don’t have the warm glow of history attached.

None of which might have mattered, except for the fact that there is far, far more money in cycling today than ever before. But still not quite enough, according to many. So if the sport and its fans want all the benefits and progress that come with secure, high-dollar, long-term sponsorships, they’re going to have to be able to assure sponsors that victories and their value aren’t being sold out from under them to fill riders’ pockets. For active sponsors, riders selling race victories is tantamount to stealing from the cash register. And for potential sponsors, race fixing is a tell-tale sign of a corrupt sport. That warning is rendered even more ominous not by fans’ cries of shock and outrage, but by a nostalgic chorus of “it’s always been that way!” If the dope hasn’t scared them off, a tolerant or perceived tolerant attitude towards race fixing should.

Its fun to be blasé. To pointlessly and self-satisfyingly revel in long experience, and to casually point out that hey, we’ve been here before, and life’s gone on. Because it has. But we’ve been blasé about other things in cycling, too, and where has it gotten us? We have the number one team in the world folding for lack of sponsors, team “mergers” that are little more than liferafts for select riders, and undeniably poor governance. Look, I hate the shrill cries of youth and inexperience as much as the next jerk, but maybe its time to start letting the howling go on a bit longer.

Broomwagon

• I just hope that, when this Liege fuss dies down and the 2012 season gets underway, some kind professional will do lifers the favor of riding with a raw steak in his pants to find relief from a saddle sore. Then we can all rant about how that just didn’t used to be that unusual, so we don’t know what all the fuss is about. Also, if it’s hot, you should put a cabbage leaf on your head.
  



• I’m fairly surprised at how un-scrutinized by the howling masses Vinokourov’s first Liege victory has remained this week. But I also know why.
  
  In 2005, Vino (then T-Mobile) picked up his first Liege by beating Jens Voigt (then CSC) to the line after a two-up break. Familiar? But, power of the internet fetishes being what they are, these days in cycling YOU DO NOT QUESTION ANY ASPECT OF JENS VOIGT. Of course, there’s no reason to think Voigt engaged in anything untoward, beyond the spot Vinokourov finds himself in now, the somewhat parallel race situations, and the fact that until that Liege, T-Mobile had failed to score a single victory in 2005 and was getting desperate. You know. Just sayin’. Uhhhhmmm...Jens rules!
  



• Anyone have what the odds were for Vino and Kolobnev, respectively, at the 2010 Liege? Wondering whose fingers the bookies will be after. According to his emails, Kolobnev's testicles are already spoken for.
  



• No, I haven't addressed the alleged crime of the journalist hacking into Vino's email, which is reprehensible. But I've seen so many cycling insiders reflexively jump on that angle rather than addressing the sporting issue that it feels too much like the old forces at work. The email hacking is a crime, yes, it's a horrible violation of privacy, yes, it should be investigated, yes. But it does not make race selling/buying any less damaging, so musing on about which is "worse" doesn't really do any good.
  



• It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I'm rusty, so bear with me. Trying to decide what to do with this blog thing. Shoot me ideas if you have them.

# posted by Ryan @ 5:00 PM 7 comments

Today, the Belgian federation strongly expressed its opinion that race number 108, which Wouter Weylandt wore at the time of his death in the 2011 Giro d’ Italia, should not be taken out of circulation in tribute as some have suggested. Thank goodness someone spoke up, and thank goodness it’s the KBWB that’s putting a foot down. Since Weylandt was one of its own, its voice should carry some weight in stopping a well-meaning but misguided movement.

Giro d'Italia organizer RCS has already elected to retire the number from its race. That’s their choice, and a fitting gesture, I suppose. And for a single race, it works. But as far as the effort to have the number removed any more broadly from bike racing? I’m with the Belgians. It just doesn’t make sense – from a sporting perspective or from a tribute perspective – and it’s best to quash this would-be custom before it spreads.

Theoretically, and probably in practice, the retirement of 108 works just fine. In professional cycling races, teams are typically given numbers in blocks of 10, but actual team size is usually no more than nine riders. So with the elimination of number 108, the 11th team on the roster, which would use the block of numbers beginning with 101, could just use the previously unused 109 for most races, or the seldom-seen 110 for grand tours, in which teams field a ninth man. (The world championship, where some countries have more than 10 riders obviously screws up the norms, but it always has, 108 or no 108.)

But where number retirement in cycling really falls down is in the sustainability of the custom. We all hope, of course, that no more riders will ever lose their lives in cycling competition. Unfortunately, it will happen. When it does, what happens if that rider is wearing number 102? Take 102 and 108 out of the mix and, all of a sudden, you’re don't have enough usable numbers in that block to field a full team in a grand tour. I suppose you could eliminate the whole block and add another on the end (i.e., remove 101-110 and add 221-230), but a cluttered graveyard of gaps and adjustments just creates more problems. And what happens when a rider wearing the traditional ending-in-1 number of a team leader perishes? Do you retire those prized designations, or only those of the rank-and-file? Not to mention that the idea of every start sheet forever more being pock-marked by missing numbers is just plain morbid. There are reasons that, in most cultures, we don’t bury our dead outside our front doorsteps.

The question of what to do when that next loss comes also raises the ugly issue of deciding who is deemed worthy of such remembrance. Weylandt was young, talented, popular, and riding at the top level of the sport. The urge to find a way to remember him comes quickly, easily, and organically. But what happens when a less-loved rider perishes in competition? What happens if the next is Ricardo Ricco, or any of the riders currently regarded as the black hats of professional cycling? Ricco’s not the likable figure that Weylandt was, from all accounts of both, really, but he’s still a man and a father, and still a cyclist, no? If the sport chooses to honor the dead simply by virtue of their being fellow cyclists, it has to give equal remembrance to its perceived villains and heroes. A professional license is the standard for entry, not a righteous or well-received life. And if cycling tries, through efforts such as number retirement, to remember its fallen according to the quality of the life they've led, then I think that’s terribly misguided, and a judgment the sport has no place making.

The issue of who warrants formal remembrance in the sport has myriad thorny offshoots. What happens when it’s a continental pro racing in a low-ranked event in Asia that dies in competition? Will his number be retired from the Tour de France, or from a kermesse in Belgium? Probably not, but again, he’s still a pro cyclist, no? Should we really choose to remember the dead based on watts-at-threshold, palmares, or the UCI ranking of the races death visits? Of course, the world at large does remember the dead differently based on all manner of similar metrics – there are reasons that, 100 years from now, long-dead George Clooney will be far better remembered than long-dead me. But within cycling, and particularly in dealing with death, the sport – by which I mean organizers, events, governing bodies, and the like – shouldn’t choose favorites among its children.

All of the above arguments shouldn’t even be relevant, though, because they assume that a race number could be a good way to remember a cyclist. And that isn’t so. In the context of the ongoing Giro d’ Italia back in May, referencing 108 was a fitting and useful way to speak of Weylandt, to paint on banners and signs and roadways, to mark tweets and to raise money for his growing family. But beyond the context of a given race, race numbers are a transient, disposable identification. If they weren’t, cycling would have no use for safety pins. Weylandt wasn’t number 108 like Dale Earnhardt was number 3 or Pat Tillman was number 40. Weylandt was number 108 at the Giro simply because his last name started with a W, not a C. In the race before the Giro he was a different number, and in the race after it he more than likely would have been another number still, and he probably wouldn't have given any of it a second thought, unless perhaps the number was 13. To tie his memory to something as fleeting as his race number on the day of his death not only creates an administrative and precedential mess, it shortchanges the memory itself.

I say all of this not because I don’t think Weylandt should be remembered. He should, just like Fabio Casartelli and Andrei Kivilev and Thomas Casarotto and all the others before him deserve to be remembered, both as cyclists and as people. But altering a rote, administrative aspect of the sport just isn’t the way to remember any rider. I have every confidence that Weylandt's memory will be honored in far better ways by fans, and certainly by those who knew him best, whether those ways are public or not. And if we stamp out the number retirement concept now, we’ll avoid that terribly uncomfortable moment when the decision is made, in months or years and for a variety of reasons, to put it back on the start list again.

Broomwagon

• Yes, it’s a little late for any post on this topic, but the Belgian federation’s statement made it a bit timely again, at least. And hey, it’s my site; I can blow the deadlines if I want to.
  




• This post should in no way be seen as an indictment of the work done by the guys at Stomach of Anger. Their quick thinking, quick acting design and sale of the 108 t-shirt in the wake of Weylandt’s death raised $37,000 for his girlfriend and unborn child. It was a wonderful, generous, and brilliant effort, and they deserve another pat on the back for it, however late. Go buy a shirt from them.

# posted by Ryan @ 3:34 PM 3 comments

I’ve been accused, as recently as that last post, of not being a very good conspiracy theorist. It’s true. I admit to the possibility that I lack a certain degree of insight, or that I am possessed of only limited imagination. Or maybe I just look terrible in tin foil hats. Regardless, I believe it’s important to show some effort, to rise to refute the accusations of your critics, and, in this case to strive to find ever more complex frameworks in which to place seemingly simple events. So here’s my theory on why public airing of team communications stopped being a talking point for directors sportiff and suddenly became a reality at Sunday’s Ronde van Vlaanderen: it’s about asserting content ownership.

According to team directors, the UCI has dismissed the notion of public, auto-racing style access to team radio, an idea the teams floated in an effort to keep ahold of the communications in the face of the expanding UCI ban. But there it was, loud and proud during the RVV broadcast, and to considerable success by most accounts. Getting it done, of course, required cooperation between the broadcaster, possibly the race organizer, and obviously the teams, who provided access to their audio and had cameras mounted in their cars. And they did it all, seemingly, without a UCI finger in the pie. And I’m guessing that it’s driving the UCI nuts.

What I saw in Sunday's effort – undertaken as the radio battle between teams and the UCI rages on – was not just an earnest effort to demonstrate the idea's potential to the UCI and to anti-radio fans, though it certainly did that. I think it was – or at least, should have been – a purposeful assertion of ownership by the teams over the team communication content (i.e., everything that's said over the team radios). At the RVV, the teams arguably set a precedent that they are the ones who can permit, sell, or otherwise provide access to their communications to outside parties, whoever those parties may be. I expect you’ll see similar broadcasting in the coming months, because every time teams get the radio communications aired, it reasserts that ownership and builds the precedent.

Why is the issue of who "owns" all the chatter important? Well, due to the experiment’s apparent success on Sunday, the continued resistance to the radio ban, and the UCI’s near-slobbering envy of Formula 1, it’s entirely likely that the UCI will eventually come around to the public team communications idea. And when it does, you can bet that it will try to assert ownership of those communications, likely based on the fact that they are conducted in the course of a UCI-sanctioned race, where the UCI governs radio usage. So why, again, is this important? Why would the UCI want ownership over a stream of mostly boring drivel about upcoming roundabouts and who needs a Coke or a wee-wee break? Because it’s salable content, and the UCI would almost always rather potential income go into its coffers instead of the teams' or organizers'.

In the near-term, the rights to air those director-rider conversations could be sold to broadcasters, though I'd wager Sunday’s dose was a freebie, both to help the teams make the case for keeping radios and to win support of broadcasters, who in France have come out against radios. And I'd also guess the teams might continue to provide free access to TV broadcasters as a condition of keeping radios. But the fact that teams might be willing to provide the content without charge doesn't mean it is without monetary value. In the long-term, money-making possibilities abound. For instance, you could sell team-specific subscriptions to fans that would allow them to hear their team or teams of choice via internet or smartphone. Just 5 Euro per race, or 45 Euro for the whole year, friend. Want to get farther out there? Think product placement. Think commercials. If they maintain ownership of the communications, the teams could offer such “services” as value-adds to their sponsors and as enticements to future backers. If the UCI owns the communications, those services will go to UCI sponsors or the highest bidder, and the money will go into the UCI’s pocket.

It’ll be interesting to see what tack the UCI takes after the loudly trumpeted broadcast of team communications at the RVV. I say loudly trumpeted because the truth is, we’ve seen the same sort of in-car material before during the Tour de France and other races, and the UCI doesn't seem to give a damn. But now that the material has been re-cast as part of the radio debate, and has extended from select teams to all teams, it’s very likely to spark some sort of UCI response. Like I said, I suspect the UCI will ultimately want a piece of the action. And if it doesn’t get what it wants from the teams on the issue, I’ll be on the lookout for more rigid enforcement of rules against filming from caravan vehicles.

Broomwagon

• Ah, and what of the great Jonathan Vaughters “don’t work and wait for the sprint for third” kerfuffle that the RVV team communications provided us? The debate rages on. You know why it rages on? Because people are debating each other without acknowledging that they’re often arguing about two different issues.
  
  Supporters of the no-work order (understandably including the team) are arguing their side based on the tactical wisdom of the call. Was Vaughters’s order the right one? That’s easy to answer: yes, though admittedly not for the reasons he thought. Garmin’s two men in the front group, Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd, didn’t work to bring back the move, which came back anyway under the impetus of BMC and Vacansoleil. So, it might have been the wrong reason for not working, but not working was still the right call. (Though I do believe that the instructions to sit and wait for the sprint led to Garmin being too inattentive and missing the key move.)
  
  But in arguing tactical correctness against those critical of Vaughters’s orders, I think some folks are missing the point of what the “other side” in this fractured debate is really saying. Namely, that they just wished Vaughters's instructions to the troops had been different. In racing, there is the correct move which, as here, is often the conservative one – don’t work, sit in, follow the moves. And then there’s the popular move, the one the fans and media want to see. That move is usually the gutsy one – put your cards on the table, no prisoners, nothing to lose, risk it all. Attack, attack, attack. No, it’s not always (probably not even usually) the most tactically sound choice, but asking fans to not want it is absurd. And fans calling for the bold moves instead of the conservative strategy doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ignorant, it just means they want to see some go-for-broke racing from teams they like. Especially in the classics, which are blessedly free from the cautious we-don’t-actually-need-to-win aspects of stage racing.
  
  [Please note: The above point is not aimed at Jonathan Vaughters. There are few in his position more fan-savvy. It’s natural that he publicly clarified why he made the call he did and why it made sense at the time, and he’s cheerfully acknowledged that, hey, it didn’t quite go down like he thought it would, and there it was for all the world to see. That’s racing. And I don’t for a minute think he’s mystified as to why he’s taking flack for it. Further, by engaging the fans, he’s turned it into a teachable moment about the healthy, engaging debate that can come from the public being able to watch the decisions as they’re made. Well done.]
  
  


• Bjarne Riis may have lost most of his team to Leopard, but he didn’t lose his ability to revitalize flagging careers. How does he do it? In my opinion: jersey design. Sure, the fake abs and feathers that fueled greatness at CSC are gone from the shirt, but the infamous trouser bird seems to have ably filled the inspirational void. Whatever the source of greatness, welcome back, Nick Nuyens.
  
  


• So is that dude on the Muur going to wear that same Colnago sweater and hat every year?
  
  


• I won’t rattle on about it, but this year’s Ronde had to be one of the best bike races I’ve seen in five years. Probably longer. What was often billed in the runup as a fairly closed race between Boonen, Cancellara and maybe Gilbert turned into a brawl between a decade’s worth of classics strongmen, from the aforementioned to Chavanel, Nuyens, Hushovd, Ballan, Langeveld, Hincapie, Leukmans, Devolder and on and on. Chapeau and thanks all.
  
  


• Today’s obscure title reference brought to you by the Ramones.

Labels: Classics, Media, Ronde, UCI

# posted by Ryan @ 3:35 PM 6 comments